Monday, February 2, 2015

Mahishadal Rajbari - the new Palace

I've already introduced you with the old palace of Mahishadal with its brief history and today yours truly is back with the new palace (Phul Bagh Rajbari) which is popular among tourists as the Mahishadal Rajbari. Just like a posh bungalow the palace is situated at the center of a garden with innumerable palm trees. The ground floor houses a mini museum and the upper floor is not accessible to visitors, kept totally private as the residence of the existing members of the royal family who are presently settled in Kolkata. In a soothing afternoon the surrounding area remains occupied mostly by attention-shy young couples and the best bet for you would be to pay the nominal entry fee to explore the ground floor.

Unfortunately, photography is prohibited inside the palace but you can capture the photos of the palanquin, imported alloy canons hibernating over the corridor or a dozen of stag heads ornamenting the corridor walls. The central hall houses all photos, paintings, domestic articles, musical instruments and furnitures used by ancestors of the royal family. In peripheral rooms you can see billiard board, weapons, preserved hunted animals, a giant bed (perhaps used by the queen), miscellaneous furnitures and a small library. If you are interested in museums, the collection is not sufficient enough to impress you but for a person like me who gets bored by large museums, Mahishadal Rajbari museum can be pleasantly satisfying.

A marbled-top tea table at the backside corridor of the Mahishadal Rajbari.

Various movies have been shot in this palace and the caretaker informed me that a shooting had just concluded one day before my visit. Till date, three Hindu festivals- Durga-puja, Kali-puja and Ratha yatra are celebrated in this palace in the grandest possible way! The present 36-wheeled chariot is 75 feet high and every year its rope is first pulled by a representative of the royal family. It becomes quite obvious to us why a fortnight long fair is set up in Mahishadal in Ratha yatra festival... after all, time struggles to corrode traditions with deep rooted history. If you haven't read my last photo post on Mahishadal Singhaduar Palace, click here to check that out.

This upper floor of the palace is residence of the presently existing royal family members.

He has been blogging since 2007, and the pen often runs out of ink, but thankfully the mystic spirit of traveling-clicking-storytelling always reconquers Anunoy before it gets too late! In his early childhood, Anunoy’s craving for backpacking was sowed by his father. He has been a rolling stone ever since, forming passionate bonds with motorcycle touring and photography to add more layers to his wander lust. Between see-sawing a small family and a thankless job, Anunoy Samanta manages to run his own photography cum travel blog- Clicking Photos on the Go.